The Wicked Widow Meets Her Match

by Stefanie Sloane

  Mrs. Templeton dropped to her knees beside Grace, her hands trembling as she reached out to offer comfort.

  Grace squeezed the older woman’s shaking hand in hers as she stared unseeing at the rough floor. The sound of Mrs. Templeton’s quiet sobbing filled Grace’s head. She could not understand what had just happened. Timothy was a big, strong lad of twelve, smart as he could be, and just as kind. Four years before, when Mrs. Templeton had discovered him boldly attempting to steal a pie cooling on a table near the kitchen door, she’d boxed his ears then asked Grace what should be done with the rascal.

  Timothy had cried. Then Grace had cried. And Mrs. Templeton had followed right along. The boy was hired; one potential criminal saved from the streets, and a family was knit together out of odd scraps and old thread.

  Family.

  Grace lifted her skirt and reached for the knife she kept strapped to her thigh. She stood with the blade in her hand, bracing herself. “Come, Mrs. Templeton. We must hurry.”

  “My lady?” the cook asked, tears spilling down her cheeks as she looked up at her. “I can’t go out there. Not with our dear Timothy …”

  Grace swallowed hard. She dreaded the scene that she knew with deep certainty awaited them in the drawing room beyond the hidden panel. But she also recognized they had no time to waste. The killers would be back. She could not risk Mrs. Templeton’s safety.

  She tugged, urging the woman to her feet.

  “You’ve no choice. Stay here and we will be found, as will Mr. Templeton. I need you to be strong. Can you do that for me?”

  Mrs. Templeton nodded, her chin firming with purpose, and tightened her hold on Grace’s hand.

  “Good.” Grace reached for the lever that would allow the panel to swing open. “Now, close your eyes. I will guide you. There’s no need for you to see Timothy as he is now. Remember the lovely boy as he was.”

  She grasped the wooden handle and turned it, wishing she could also close her eyes.

  Grace steeled herself, breathed a silent, fervent prayer, and pushed the door panel outward.

  Langdon Bourne, the Earl of Stonecliffe, rubbed his tired eyes and then examined the deep wrinkles that crisscrossed his clothing. He attempted to stir some disgust within himself. Linen shirt, silk waistcoat, even his buff breeches looked as though the earl had recently slept in them—which he had. He could not remember when he’d last changed. Nor eaten a decent meal, for that matter. Or left the room he inhabited at present. And he did not particularly care.

  Some would say his indifference was due to the urgent nature of the business at hand. As an agent for the Young Corinthians, a covert spy organization in service to the crown, Langdon had spent a long, grueling three days interrogating members of the Kingsmen.

  Others would wonder if the recent marriage of Langdon’s fiancée, Lady Sophia Afton, to his brother might have something to do with his detachment.

  Both would be correct.

  His entire life had been spent in the pursuit of what was right, honest, and true. Goodness was the ultimate goal. A true gentleman, who put family and honor first, the only role he ever possessed any desire to play. And where had all of his effort, his restraint, his sacrifice, his bloody goodness gotten him?

  Langdon shrugged his wide shoulders as he considered the question. Nowhere. Or worse than nowhere—lost. He absentmindedly took in his surroundings for the hundredth time. The office supposedly occupied by the solidly respectable firm of Manx & Chisom was a fraud, though one would never suspect it to be so. Created by the Young Corinthians as a place for interrogation, the room’s unadorned white walls, solid wood desk and chairs, and neat stacks of documents placed about the rooms proclaimed the resident to be a man who practiced law, not espionage.

  What the spy organization set out to accomplish they did with single-minded determination, be it the minute details of the false office where Langdon now sat or the overthrowing of criminal gangs, duchies, and even countries. Formed during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the Young Corinthians would have pleased Socrates, who so famously touted that necessity was indeed the mother of invention. Elizabeth’s Golden Age had been a highly creative period in England’s history, as well as a time of prosperity and peace—or so it looked on the surface. The Queen’s father’s reign had proven to be one of the bloodiest England had ever seen. As for the Virgin Queen? She had intended to end the Tudor dynasty on a high note and had ruled with a more moderate hand and forgiving heart.

  But beneath the Virgin Queen’s seemingly perfect empire? Plots, intrigue, and conspiracies brewed.

  Queen Elizabeth was the target of many assassination attempts and conspiracies against her rule—a fact that did not please her particular friend and spymaster, Francis Walsingham.

  In order to safeguard the Queen and her crown, Walsingham had formed the Young Corinthians and hidden the organization deep within the British government. The year was 1570. Though Walsingham had successfully defended the Queen countless times before, the infamous Ridolfi plot shook the spymaster to his core. An early supporter of the Northern rebellion, Florentine banker and ardent Catholic Roberto Ridolfi conceived of a plan that included support from abroad in a bid to bring Mary, Queen of Scots, to the throne.

  The plot was foiled, the Queen saved. And the Young Corinthians were born.

  Walsingham engaged those men whom he felt he could trust—in other words, nobles with a stake in the success of the Queen’s empire. The spymaster recruited heavily from the ranks of dukes and earls, viscounts and barons. He funded the undertaking with his own coin and taught his recruits all that he knew about operating within the deep and murky world that lay beneath the shimmering facade of Elizabeth’s Golden Age.

  Now, nearly 250 years after Walsingham established his original band of noble spies, Langdon had already spent over a decade as a member of the Corinthians, their history as real to him as his own. He’d been but a boy of twelve when he’d first learned of the spy organization’s existence. He, Sophia, Nicholas, and their friend Dash had found the lifeless body of Sophia’s mother in the Aftons’ country manor. The crime was somehow connected to the Young Corinthians and after the children had been inadvertently told of the organization’s existence, they were sworn to secrecy. They were also assured that the agency would capture the killer, a task not one agent had managed to accomplish in the years that followed. Even as a boy, Langdon had known he was meant to find the man responsible and bring him to justice—as much for Sophia as for the boys.

  Shortly after finishing his education at Eton, he’d joined the ranks of the Young Corinthians, just as he’d always planned.

  His life goals had been determined and immutable. He would find the murderer and bring him to justice, marry Sophia, father an heir, and live the life he’d always known was his destiny as the Earl of Stonecliffe.

  Only resolution never came. The Corinthians’ file contained clues to the Afton case but they were few and of little use. Henry Prescott, Viscount Carmichael, Langdon’s superior, forbade him from officially pursuing any leads, convinced such activity would only further torment Langdon without purpose.

  But Langdon did not agree. Apprehending the killer was Langdon’s duty. His responsibility. And so he’d read through the case information until he could recite each line from memory.

  Not that it had done much, if any, good.

  Until recently, when a journal found hidden in the home of Dash’s father—himself a retired Corinthian agent—had produced a lead. All three of Langdon’s friends had pursued the new clues, discovering a link to the Kingsmen and one of their leaders, the Bishop. They had kept the existence of the journal a secret, convinced that Langdon would have insisted on involving the Young Corinthians.

  Which he most surely would have, he thought grimly. Still, that was hardly the point. The three had called in the Corinthians to capture the Bishop and Langdon had learned the truth of their deception. They’d betrayed him and endangered their lives when it was Langdon’s
case to solve. Even now, with Sophia married to Nicholas and no longer Langdon’s fiancée, capturing the criminal remained Langdon’s duty. Nothing else in his life had gone according to plan. He’d done as he should and forgiven Nicholas and Sophia when they’d revealed their relationship, and then insisted they leave the case in the capable hands of the Corinthians. Justice would be his. Something inside of Langdon felt altered—his neat, normally tidy interior had been ransacked and the contents of his mind and heart were out of place. A few bits and bobs had gone missing altogether. The only tie to his life before losing Sophia was his devotion to apprehending the killer. Solving the case would bring him back around to the man he’d once been and the only life he’d ever known.

  Veni, vixi, vici.

  I came, I lived, I conquered. The words—the Young Corinthians motto—were a faint murmur from Langdon’s lips just as the heavy door opened and a fellow Corinthian ushered in yet another member of the Kingsmen, London’s most powerful gang.

  Langdon critically assessed the man as he took a seat in the only other chair, directly across the wide oak desk. He was tall and thin, dressed in a threadbare brown coat with pants that were a shade darker. His red vest and the once-white shirt that he wore beneath were stained, no doubt from food, and his square jaw and ruddy cheeks bristled with ginger beard stubble.

  “Your name?” Langdon asked brusquely.

  “Topper,” the man answered with a grin that revealed yellow teeth, tipping his dirty, battered, and scarred high-crowned beaver hat.

  Langdon folded his arms across his chest. “As I am sure you are aware, Topper, we’ve interviewed many of your fellow Kingsmen—nearly fifty of you, in fact, in relation to the untimely death of a man known as the Bishop. So you will forgive me if I forgo the niceties and get to the point: I want your legal, given name. The government requires such things, you see.”

  Topper nodded and raised one thick red-gold eyebrow in approval. “The guv’ment likes things neat and tidy like, right enough. I can see the sense in that. My name is Eugene Marks. Everyone calls me Topper, though, on account of—”

  “Yes, the hat,” Langdon interrupted, his voice gruff with irritation. Usually, he would find pleasure in the orderly nature of the required Corinthian paperwork. Name, age, known affiliations. Beginning with the basic necessities of an individual’s life made sense to him. Much like the alphabet starting with A or one plus one equaling two, facts were reliable. Or they had been once.

  Before Sophia and Nicholas …

  Before the world as he’d known it, believed it to be, had been turned on its side.

  Now, fact and fiction occupied the same space in Langdon’s mind, each open to interpretation. He no longer had faith in any version.

  Langdon stared hard at Topper and focused what little energy remained in his exhausted brain on the criminal.

  “I apologize, Mr. Mar—er, Topper,” Langdon said, switching to the man’s sobriquet when his bushy brows lowered with annoyance and he appeared about to object. Langdon had little time or patience to accommodate the other man. But he needed his cooperation, not his ire. Besides, a more sinister thought ghosted across his mind as he examined his actions. Impatient. Unprofessional. Neither word would have been used to describe Langdon in the past. He had to hold on to himself, before much more than Sophia slipped away. “As I said, we have spoken with many of your fellow Kingsmen. None have seen fit to share any information concerning the Bishop’s death or who ordered it, despite the distinct advantages we’ve offered in exchange. I am sure you can understand how frustrating such a process can become—especially when no progress is made.”

  Langdon knew it was in his best interest to hold his temper with the man. But manipulation was an entirely different tool from anger. Topper had been bribed once in the past and had given up his immediate boss, the Bishop, in exchange for a sizable amount of coin. Langdon wondered whether the man’s greed would sway him a second time.

  Topper’s beady eyes glinted from beneath his heavy brows. “Advantages, you say. And what kind of advantages might we be talkin’ ’bout?”

  Langdon was almost sure the man was salivating like a mangy dog peering into the butcher shop’s window. His visceral distaste for Topper unnerved Langdon, but he focused on baiting the criminal.

  “That depends on the quality of the information,” Langdon answered, easing back in his chair. Despite tiredness, he watched Topper with wary eyes, analyzing his calculating expression.

  Topper inhaled, his breath whistling through the gap separating his two front teeth. “I’ll want passage to America and enough coin to get me settled in a new life.”

  “Afraid what you know will get you killed, eh?” Langdon said mildly. “That must be quality information, indeed.”

  “I am not afraid of anything, guv,” Topper replied plainly. “But it is true enough I’d prefer to avoid a knife to the gut for a while longer. And what I have to tell you will take you to the King.”

  Langdon schooled his features into polite interest. “The mention of a king is hardly grounds for reward, Topper.” Bile rose in his throat at the man’s willingness to betray his boss. Clearly, honor was not a concept the man knew anything about.

  “You can’t go straightaway to the King—you ought to know that by now,” Topper said, arching his thick brow with smug enjoyment. “Take notice of everything—that’s what the Bishop told me. Even those things that do not seem important at all.”

  Langdon fought the urge to tell Topper he’d done nothing more than that for the last two weeks. Every incident within the Seven Dials district, where the Kingsmen were based, had been thoroughly investigated. And nothing had revealed a link to the man known as the Bishop.

  “A man was found dead in Bedford Square recently, ain’t that right?” Topper asked, crossing one long leg over the other.

  God, Langdon was tired of the man’s face. Still, Topper had delivered on his promise once. He might do so again. “That is correct. He did not bear the Kingsmen tattoo, if that’s what you are getting at.”

  “And who told you we’ve all been marked?”

  No one had. Langdon, like his fellow Corinthians, had simply assumed all members of the Kingsmen were required to bear the tattoo of a chess piece on their right shoulder, just as all of the gang members they’d captured or interrogated had.

  “Are you telling me differently?” Langdon countered, his interest sharpening, the scent and heat of a rekindled trail stirring in his belly.

  Topper’s scarred leather boot bumped the desk, the quick, rhythmic tapping giving away his nervous tension and belying his easy expression. “Soldiers carry the mark. Makes it easy to identify a body that’s been maimed. But the generals and higher-ups aren’t interested in being identified, you see. Quite the opposite for some of them.”

  “Even if you are telling the truth, what would one dead man have to offer me?” Langdon asked, disguising his piqued interest with subtle annoyance. “Nothing of note was found on the body. And he is far past talking.”

  “If you know what to ask, he has a message.” Topper’s boot stopped moving and the room grew eerily quiet. “Do we have a deal?”

  “You will have to do better than a dead man, Topper.” Langdon wasn’t a man prone to lying. He’d ride the conversation out and if Topper had something useful to say he’d see to his request. But a rather large “if” stood between the ginger-haired man and freedom in America.

  Topper’s smile widened, indicating he was pleased with his progress. He leaned forward, his gleaming gaze fixed on Langdon. “That man? He was killed because of what you and your friends are up to.”

  “What would the King want with you?” Mrs. Templeton asked as she bustled back and forth across the length of Grace’s room, grabbing up anything she could lay her hands on.

  Grace stood in the center of her bedroom and stared at a painting that hung on the wall directly across from her bed. It was a landscape of minimal skill and featured a bucolic wave o
f rolling hills and green glens. When she’d first arrived at 3 Bedford Street, Grace assumed she disliked the work because it was homely.

  Eventually, she realized there was every reason to loathe the picture. As she’d noted immediately, the artist lacked any real talent. And when one considered it hung on the wall of her prison cell? If not for her father’s betrayal, she would never have come to reside at 3 Bedford Street. Lord Danvers had been a poor father, true enough. His constant state of inebriation had made any sort of meaningful connection with the man impossible. Grace could have lived with that. But when he’d gambled her away to Dr. Crowther in a game of chance? Grace’s father ceased to exist altogether.

  If not for Lord Danvers’ betrayal, she never would have darkened the door of the doctor’s home, and Grace would have been spared the sight of the poorly executed painting.

  “Honestly? I have no idea what he might want with me,” Grace finally replied, fear shadowing her soul momentarily.

  Mrs. Templeton flew past her en route to the wardrobe. Grace reached out and grasped the dear woman’s elbow.

  “And I’ve no intention of ever finding out,” she added, forcing the woman to stand still. “Now, we need take only the essentials, Mrs. Templeton. Leave everything else.”

  Two days had passed since the doctor’s and Timothy’s brutal killings. Grace had ushered Mrs. Templeton out of the house and directly to the Dolphin Pub, where they had located Mr. Templeton. They’d been moving about the city for forty-eight hours, only now daring to return to the townhouse.

  Mrs. Templeton gave Grace a pained look. “You cannot leave with only the clothes on your back, my lady. It isn’t proper.”

  “Isn’t it?” Grace asked, pulling the woman toward the window. “Then it is in keeping with the entirety of my tenure here. Besides, I want nothing that will remind me of my time with the doctor.”

  She unlocked the window and pushed up on its painted frame until the edge came level with her eyes. “Help me, will you?”